Kodiak Dual Battery & Management System

it's the first weekend in October, 2006, and I find myself in the Pomona,
California for the big Off-Road Expo show. It's a huge event that caters
to the sand buggies, ATV, and off-road 4x4 folks. If you've not been
there, you need to go and soak up all of the truck, Jeep, and buggy products
that are offered. If that doesn't satisfy your appetite for a day or two,
you are most certainly incurable.

Since I was in CA for the show, Robert Yates, long time Jeepin'
buddy from so many off-road trips, provided me with a place to crash for the
long weekend. We spent Saturday at the Pomona Fairplex looking at the
vendor booths and bumping into friends that I'd not seen for too many years.
Saturday evening, Robert hosted a nice BBQ and we all caught up on Jeepin'
stories, trips from long ago, and even managed to squeeze a few old wheelin'
videos into the mix. A good time was had by all.

So....why am I telling you this? It's the lead in to this
write-up.....the Kodiak Dual Battery & Management System. I'll let Robert
introduce the kit and explain his reasons as to why he was interested in the
Kodiak product.

I have been looking to make my Jeep more self sufficient due to
the fact that I am leaning towards more of an expeditionary style of Jeeping.
I have a winch, a Ready Welder and am looking to also substantially upgrade the
lighting on my Jeep. As such, I had been investigating a dual battery kit
so that I could have more on board power, 2 batteries in case I was stuck while
wheeling alone and needed the welder, as well as having a deep reserve for
winching purposes. I found there are plenty of kits on on the market for 6
cylinder TJ's with air conditioning but most all used Optimas and I did not want
to use Optimas. I am a big fan of the Hawker Energy Odyssey batteries
having had good success with a single PC1200 in my Jeep. Until recently,
the only dual kit that could be purchased with the Hawker product was the
Northwest Power Industries version that ran the PC925. While it's a great
kit, I wanted to run the 1200's as I felt the 925's were a bit to small from a
CCA perspective as well as the reserve capacity.

At last years Expo, I ran into a fellow named Yawan from Kodiak
Industries and he had a demo version in a Jeep at the Expo that ran the dual
1200's. After some haggling, a deal was struck and the wait was on for the
production version. It was eventually delivered last March and due to
home-life changes and work, I was unable to get it installed until recently.
When Stu arrived, I already had the new tray swapped in and the 2 batteries
installed although I still needed to wire the batteries up through the manger
and run the harness into the cab. That's where we'll get started with the
write up.

Removal of the old tray and the installation of the Kodiak tray
is a 1 banana job. The materials are top notch and it fits very well
although it is tight and I needed to apply some BFH to the inner fender so we
could clear one corner of the tray. The batteries on the other hand
require some cajoling but once they are located, the fit is tight and the tie
downs are again, top quality. One area of concern, at least with my kit as
delivered, was the lack of clear and concise instructions. That may have
been resolved with the newer kits although Yawan will answer calls if you phone
him with questions. This initially caused a bit of irritation as it was
not immediately clear on how the batteries were to be oriented. After some
trial and error, I arrived at a decision wherein the batteries would sit with
the terminals facing each other.

The first step was to locate the manager solenoid...you can see
it located on the inside tie-down which came pre tapped for the button-head
bolts used to secure it. For a point of reference, the battery nearest the
fender is what I considered to be the main or starting battery with the inside
battery being the auxiliary.

The next step was to determine the cable lead locations that
would run from the positive terminals of both batteries to the solenoid and the
ground cable which is connected to the negative terminals of both batteries.
Kodiak includes pre-crimped and terminated cables for this purpose. The
ground wire location was easy to determine and with the Odyssey batteries being
tapped for a 9/16" bolt on top of the stud, no terminals are needed although
Kodiak supplies 4 new terminals with the kit.

The positive leads were another story as there was a long
positive and a short positive cable and again, without instructions, it was a
little bit of trial and error to determine which cable should be run from a
particular battery to the solenoid. I wanted my auxiliary battery to be
tied to my winch so that determined which side of the solenoid the inside
battery would be connected to and ultimately, we decided that the short cable
would be used for the auxiliary battery/solenoid connection and the long cable
would accommodate the main.